Snapshots
by Lynse
Summary: Phantom never changed, even though everything–everyone–else did. Even Dani. Especially Dani. Danny didn't realize what that meant until later. AU (warning: character death)
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Written for Phanniemay 2018, based on tumblr's ghostgabber's AU where Phantom never ages but Fenton does. Eventual **character death**. Standard disclaimers apply.

* * *

It was a moment of time frozen forever, but Danny didn't realize that at first.

The changes were gradual; though his parents joked about it, he really didn't shoot up overnight, and it took time for him to fill out his scrawny frame. He couldn't hear the changes in his voice, and it's not like he tried to grow out his hair or grow a beard. (The less he looked like Vlad, the better.) His face eventually lost the boyishness of youth, and he was unmistakeably a young man.

But Phantom never changed.

It was embarrassing at first, especially with Sam and Tucker and Jazz teasing him about it relentlessly. _Geez, Danny, you could give the little match girl a run for her money._ He'd thought his ghost form would change with him. _You're shorter than me and you know it; you're my_ little _brother._ He'd seen the other ghosts change their forms over the years; why did his stay the same? _Oh, man, you look so_ puny _!_

Look young though he did, his powers grew. He honed his skills, and any ghost who knew his reputation didn't cross him. Some of them seemed to pop up and attack for old time's sake—Skulker and the Box Ghost being the most frequent—but he became friends with most of them. Johnny 13 would let him help fix his motorcycle (Danny still wasn't sure whether it had ever actually broken if it was just a peace offering, but he wasn't complaining), and Ember actually invited him to one of the concerts she held in the Ghost Zone.

Danny's grades had never been good enough for him to get into the space program, and despite his parents expressing their support for him to pursue whatever he wanted, he chose to stay in Amity Park after high school instead of applying to college. He'd wanted to assure himself that the town wouldn't be overrun in his absence. Sam and Tucker had been reluctant to leave him on his own, but Tucker had been offered a great scholarship to MIT, and Sam wouldn't have been happy staying under her parents' roof any longer. Even Valerie left, though judging by her visits home, she monitored the news from her hometown closely.

So instead of seeking higher education, Danny officially took up the family business. With Jazz off at university, he could no longer depend on her to monitor their parents' inventions. And by working more closely with them, he got a better idea of their views. They still had no love for Phantom, but they were eventually willing to (begrudgingly) admit that Phantom did a good job protecting the town.

It was a start.

It made him think he'd be able to tell them, eventually.

When it became clear that Phantom wasn't physically changing to match Fenton, Danny used that to his advantage. They didn't resemble each other as much as they once had, and the fact that they didn't was seemingly further proof that there was no connection between them whatsoever. Not that anyone had really been looking. Not that he'd known of, at least. But if anyone had, now it could be laughed off as a strange coincidence, not used as potential evidence of what should be an impossibility.

If the Guys in White were still sniffing around, they hadn't shown their faces in years. Danny rather hoped that their department's funding had been cut and the program was now defunct, but he wasn't going to get sloppy because of that assumption. He couldn't afford to. It was better if next to no one knew his secret. It was still safer. For him. For his friends. For Dani.

The first time he realized the changes—or lack thereof—weren't simply physical was during one of Dani's visits, actually. He'd been twenty at the time and over at Sam's to escape some of the Christmas-y-ness of his own house and to visit with her and Tucker while they were home for the holidays. Dani had dropped by with Youngblood to remind him where everyone was gathering for the Christmas Truce.

Sam and Tucker had thought she'd come alone.

No one had corrected them, and that had been the beginning.

* * *

"Maybe you just need to get out of this town," Dani said as they flew over Amity Park. "Travel the world. Actually see something. Maybe that'll jumpstart whatever's not developing."

Danny huffed. As Phantom, he still looked like he was fourteen. Dani, on the other hand, looked twice his age and barely resembled the scrappy twelve year old she'd once been, no matter what form she took.

It wasn't fair.

She was a _clone_.

He shouldn't have to be stuck looking like snot-nosed kid when he was in his thirties.

"I'm serious," she said. "Tell your parents you want to see about expanding their company. Use Vlad as an excuse if you have to. I can hang around here for a while if that'll make you feel better, but I doubt any of the ghosts are going to break your truce."

She had a point. It had taken years of negotiations—begun, of course, during the Christmas Truce, when he could hold a decent conversation without trading shots—but he'd worked out a system, more or less. If the ghosts didn't harm anyone when they came, he'd allow them to visit without interfering.

The Box Ghost still made a mess of things, but he was no more terrifying than usual. Johnny 13 and Kitty became regular visitors, along with Wulf and Dora and occasionally Youngblood and Klemper. Poindexter had even dropped by on occasion. Ember was limited to one concert in the Real World per tour, but Technus was free to scavenge for recycled or abandoned electronics as long as he did all his compilations in the Ghost Zone. (Danny was pretty sure he was still planning world domination, but a strategic comment regarding his skills had him competing with Skulker in a rivalry that kept both ghosts fairly busy.)

"I don't think the fact that I haven't travelled the world is the reason for this."

Dani shrugged. "Suit yourself. But don't rule it out till you try it, cuz. Travelling's about the experience, not the destination. You're not going to find out what a place is really like from a TV screen."

Danny pulled up short, and Dani flew back to join him. "You think I'm wasting my life by staying here, don't you? Dani, I'm _protecting_ people."

She crossed her arms. "You were protecting people," she corrected, "and then you fixed it so that they don't need you anymore. By staying here and claiming you're protecting this town? You're just trying to protect yourself."

"Dani—"

"You have a family. And you can't tell me you think they wouldn't accept you after everything. So obviously that's not why you're not telling them. But maybe you think you're trying to protect them now, instead in of yourself. Protecting them from the truth. You're forgetting how much lies hurt, and you're shortchanging them for thinking they can't handle this."

"That's crazy!"

"Yeah, but it's true. You're not telling them because you don't want to admit you've been lying to them."

"I'm not—"

"You didn't even _try_ to pursue your dreams once you thought it was safe to do so. And, yeah, fine, so maybe it would've been hard to've become an astronaut, but there are other jobs out there relating to space that you definitely could've done. You're smart, Danny. Intuitive, which is worth much more than book smarts. But even when your parents were willing to let you go, you stayed. If I'm dead wrong, then why are you still here?"

"I like what I do, Dani." Normally, he'd give her points for the pun, but not now. "And Amity Park still needs Phantom, whatever you think. Pretty much every time I let my guard down, someone comes through and tries to destroy the world."

"That hasn't happened since your truce."

"And you think I'm going to tempt fate with my luck?"

Dani shot him an exasperated look. "C'mon, cuz, you can concede my point. I mean…. I get if you don't want to tell them about me. You're my family. I don't need anyone else." Lies, judging by her face, and that made them more painful for it. "But you still need them. They're your family. And this isn't a good reason to push them away or just put up with them trying to kill you whenever you're in ghost mode. They wouldn't if they knew the truth. And I get it's been easier to keep your secret from them because Phantom hasn't changed, but…. Think about what you're taking away from them by keeping this up."

She wasn't really wrong. He did think his parents would accept him if he finally told them, and he really didn't want to admit that he'd been living a lie for years. If he told them about Dani, they'd probably accept her, too. But he just….

This was easier, in a way. Predictable. And he didn't have to deal with Vlad hovering over him, demanding to know why he'd done what he had when the truth endangered his secret, too.

He hadn't talked to Vlad in years except when he couldn't help it, but he might have to. Dani was right about something else, too: whatever this was, it couldn't be normal. Not when she was his clone and she wasn't affected by…whatever this was. To Danny's eye, Plasmius had never changed, but it's not like Vlad had ever pulled out pictures from his days as a young halfa. So what if something was wrong? And if there was something wrong, who was affected? Him or Dani?

"Look, cuz, fun as this has been, I need to head out of state again. Valerie wants me to back her up while she checks something out. I'll call you later. Just…please, think about what I said."

She took off without waiting for a response.

* * *

Vlad raised his eyebrows. "You're only asking me this now, little badger?"

Danny bristled. He still hated that nickname. And even though he was taller than Vlad in his human form, the other halfa hadn't changed his ways. "Just tell me."

Vlad shuffled the papers on his desk, playing for time and just trying to make Danny squirm. It didn't improve his mood. But while Dani hadn't brought it up again, Danny had been thinking about what she'd said that day—and, more to the point, what had been bothering him since he'd first realized that her ghost form was changing while his stubbornly stayed the same. That was why he was here, now, crashing at Vlad's unannounced and demanding answers.

He hadn't wanted to give Vlad warning, since the old fruit loop might use the time to prepare convenient answers that seemed to be the truth but were really just what Danny wanted to hear.

"Danielle is a clone, my dear boy, but she is not a perfect one. For obvious reasons."

Danny rolled his eyes. "Just spit it out." Vlad never got straight to the point when he could go on and on. While he had more or less given up on the whole idea of getting Danny to turn on Jack and be the son Vlad had never had or of creating a reasonable facsimile, he still enjoyed the attention. And antagonizing Danny at every turn.

"How's your biology?"

"Aside from what I need to know? Terrible."

Vlad sighed. "Then suffice to say, little badger, that by her very nature, Danielle's body will age faster than yours."

Danny just stared at him.

"One of her imperfections is her instability. You may have stabilized her once, Daniel, but she is not exactly conservative in her actions, and such wear and tear is hardly the best thing for her fragile body. I must admit I cut quite a few corners accelerating her age to twelve years when I first started; it's surprising that she does not appear older than her current age now."

Danny opened his mouth, closed it, licked his lips, and tried again. "So, what, one of these days, she'll destabilize again? Why didn't you tell me this years ago? How can we stop it?"

"It's not a process that can be stopped. There are simply too many mutations within her genome, and cytolysis seems to have been introduced with the accelerated aging—"

"And you haven't figured out how to fix it?" Danny growled, knowing his eyes were burning green but _hating_ that Vlad had kept this knowledge to himself, that he was content with letting Dani die so easily. "We have to save her!"

"There isn't anything we can do."

"But there has—"

"Daniel. Her aging isn't normal. Surely you've realized that, considering that your own ghost form hasn't changed."

"That just makes _me_ the abnormal one," Danny bit out. "Other ghosts have changed and grown. It's not just the shapeshifters."

"The other ghosts are _ghosts_. Have you really not figured this out? It's been years, Daniel. I had thought you at least a little cleverer than this."

Danny was about to retort when Vlad's words clicked. He'd made a distinction between ghosts and halfas and already made it fairly clear that Dani's apparently normal growth was the furthest thing from it. Which meant…. "You're not aging, either? In ghost mode, I mean?"

Vlad leaned back in his chair and changed into Plasmius. "Do I still look so old to your young eyes?"

Plasmius didn't resemble Masters as much as Phantom resembled Danny's human half, but— "No. You look…. Geez, you almost look younger than me."

"I am. I was in my mid-twenties when your insufferable father caused the proto-portal to explode in my face. But this form has its advantages, little badger. It becomes more and more difficult to give up."

"Uh huh."

Vlad gave him a level look, a slight curve of his lip the only indication that he disapproved of Danny's flat tone. "You'll understand someday. Youth isn't something to be scorned."

"You can't talk. Plasmius doesn't look like a teenager. People don't look at you in ghost mode and not respect you. I swear, the kids these days—"

Vlad cut him off with an amused chuckle. "And you call _me_ old. But let an old man teach you a lesson you should have already learned: accept what you cannot change."

"What, not be the change you want to see?"

"You were always good at changing things, Daniel, but you never quite got the hang of accepting them."

"I handled the half ghost thing well enough," Danny muttered. He wasn't sure what Vlad was trying to do by giving him this so-called advice, but he was more concerned about everything else the other man had said. If he wasn't lying about Dani…. "Did you _really_ not figure out a way to stabilize your clones? I mean, you could've adapted your own mid-morph sample if you were messing with DNA anyway."

Vlad frowned, though Danny didn't know if that was because he was incorrect or just grossly oversimplifying things. "Is that really your biggest concern right now?"

"Yes!"

"Then you haven't learned anything at all. Run along, little badger. Try to prove me wrong. But don't be surprised when you fail."

* * *

" _So you still haven't told her, huh?"_

Danny phased his hand through the wall of his old bedroom to the empty space where he kept a vial of Dani's ectoplasm. He'd had to beg it off Vlad, not wanting to tell Dani what he was doing until he found a way to fix this, so he was careful with it; he wouldn't have the opportunity to get more. Fortunately, his parents weren't home right now, which meant he had free reign of the lab—and it meant he could have Jazz on speakerphone. "There's gotta be a way around it. C'mon, haven't you come across _anything_?" As of last week, Tucker hadn't had anything, either, and according to Sam's text yesterday, her best attempt at a lead had fizzled.

" _You're the one working with Mom and Dad, not me. I haven't been covered in ectoplasmic goo in years."_ Danny opened his mouth, but Jazz continued before he had a chance to say anything. _"I know, I know. I'm keeping an ear to the ground, but I don't think I'm going to be much help. You should ask Mom."_

"That would require more explaining than I'm prepared to do," Danny pointed out as he headed downstairs. Jazz was just trying to make the point again that he should tell them his secret, especially now that he'd finally— _finally_ —gotten them to agree to work _with_ Phantom more overtly than ever before. He knew they didn't trust him much, but they were getting older, and they weren't as quick or—at least in his mom's case—as accurate a shot as they'd once been. He'd told them, as both Danny _and_ as Phantom, to turn on Phantom if he ever went bad, but that was as much for their comfort as for his.

He didn't want to be let loose on the world if, for some reason, he was being controlled or anything like that. Valerie knew that, too. She didn't need to live in Amity Park or Elmerton to keep up on the news, and Phantom going rogue? She'd pay attention to that.

But he hadn't told her his secret, either, even after she'd accepted Dani. Because that wasn't the same. On that point, it _did_ come down to cowardice. Like Dani had said, he didn't want to admit to the years of lies. And, brief though the period had been, he had dated Valerie. She might take that as a betrayal of trust. Willing to work with her enemies though she might be, she could definitely hold a grudge.

Of course, mad at him as she might initially be, she would get over it. Eventually. And then he'd have someone else to help him solve this problem with Dani before it was too late. He was beyond pretending that he didn't need help.

" _And you tried talking to Vlad again?"_

"He's no help and you know it," Danny said as he flicked on the lights in the lab. "He gave up on her a long time ago. As far as he's concerned, he's humouring me. Waiting for me to realize I can't do anything. As if I'm going to abandon her."

A sigh. _"Danny, I know how much this means to you, but you need to talk to someone who knows more than we do. Sam and Tucker have their own lives now. They can't drop everything to help you as easily anymore."_

"And neither can you," Danny finished. "I know. I'm not asking you to do that. I'm just—" From Jazz's end, someone leaned on a car horn. Danny winced. That was the downside of calling Jazz in the middle of the day; if she was somewhere she could talk to him, then she was in transit, fighting her way through what seemed to be constant traffic. She walked as much as she could, claiming it kept her fit, but Danny suspected the truth was one too many close calls with drivers little better than their father. "Someone got cut off?" he guessed.

" _Patience is hard to come by in the big city,"_ was all Jazz said. _"Sometimes it feels like you're risking life and limb even venturing out onto the sidewalk."_

"But your patients thank you for it," Danny said, grinning as he imagined Jazz's eye roll. "And I'm grateful that you still put up with these phone calls from me. You're a life saver, Jazz. Really." He glanced at his watch. "You've got, what, ten minutes till you want to be there for your next appointment?"

" _Yeah. It would be tight if I didn't give myself a few extra minutes. But you didn't call to talk about me. Was it really just to see if I've miraculously discovered something to help Dani?"_

She knew it wasn't; her tone made that perfectly clear.

She could still read him like a book.

"Dani was wrong. About me just needing to travel, I mean. Since Vlad confirmed that he's the same as me…. The joke about me being half dead might not be as much of a joke as I thought. Phantom's never going to change, Jazz. I could be ninety, and if I go ghost, then _bam_! Wimpy teenager. Again."

Jazz snorted. _"Phantom can't exactly be described as wimpy, and I don't think perpetually looking like a teenager is what you're really worried about. You aren't losing yourself whenever you change, little brother. Just because you look like your past self, it doesn't mean you're becoming him. You've grown a lot over the past couple of decades, even if you can't see that growth on the outside. That face in the mirror is still_ yours _, and you're still you. Phantom might be almost unrecognizable alongside Fenton, but that dissociation isn't—"_

Jazz's words ended in a shriek, difficult to distinguish over screaming tires and blaring horns. After a loud crackle, the line went dead.

Danny's shouts went unheard.

* * *

A warm hand dropped onto his shoulder. "She's gone, sweetie," Maddie said quietly as she moved around to join him at her kitchen table. "We have to accept that." He'd come over for a visit, found them both out, and sat there to drink some tea which had long since gone cold. He hadn't heard them come back. He had also apparently missed the kettle boiling, as she held her own steaming mug as if she were going to attempt the same thing he had. He wondered if she'd be any more successful.

Nothing seemed to be _successful_ lately, including getting some sleep, considering there hadn't been any ghost attacks.

It had been three weeks.

Three weeks of numbness. Three weeks of anger. Three weeks of tears. Three weeks of being an emotional mess, swinging between feel nothing ( _dead inside_ ) and feeling _too much_.

Three weeks of that unfinished conversation repeating itself whenever he closed his eyes, always ending the same way.

Maddie pushed the warm mug toward him and pulled his untouched one away. He stared at it dully for a moment before slowly curling his fingers around it in acceptance. The patterns of steam in the air were mesmerizing. "This is incredibly hard for all of us, honey," his mother said. "You should consider talking to someone like Jack and I do. Jazz would have wanted that."

 _You don't know what she wanted_. He couldn't bring himself to voice those words, though; there was no reason for such venom. Had a ghost taken Jazz from them, no one in their family would have hesitated. They would have been able to spring into action and take down the ghost, stopping it from doing this to anyone else even if they weren't in time to save Jazz.

But it hadn't been a ghost.

It had been an ordinary human. Driving. Drowsy, maybe, or drunk or texting. Danny didn't know for sure. All he did know was that the man had run onto the sidewalk and hadn't been able to stop fast enough. He'd hit Jazz and a few other pedestrians. He'd died from his injuries after a few days in the hospital; the others had, as far as Danny knew, recovered.

Jazz hadn't even made it to the hospital.

"This isn't right," Danny whispered. "Jazz has too much left to do."

Maddie found his hand and squeezed it. "I know it hurts, sweetie. Your heart is aching with her absence. But she's gone, and you have to accept that. We can't change it."

Her words made him remember the conversation he'd had with Vlad years ago. _"You were always good at changing things, Daniel, but you never quite got the hang of accepting them."_

But _did_ he have to accept this? Jazz's death had been abrupt, senseless, and had come well before it should have. She was the _definition_ of someone with unfinished business in this realm. Didn't that mean there was a chance that she was out there somewhere? Lost in the Ghost Zone, trying to recollect her memories of her past self or trying to muster up the energy to move through the Ghost Zone, find their portal, and break through?

Danny let out a slow breath. "She might not be _gone_ gone." He tore his eyes away from the mug and looked at Maddie. "She might be out there. In the Ghost Zone. Mom, I might be able to _find_ her."

Maddie's smile was small. Sympathetic. Saddened. "Jazz wouldn't have wanted to come back as a ghost, sweetie."

"That's not necessarily a choice! And if she's out there—"

"Even if something is out there that resembles her, Danny, it wouldn't be her. You know that."

"You're wrong," he insisted. "You know as well as I do that some of the ghosts in the Ghost Zone are people and animals who had once lived in our realm. They aren't all just sentient ectoplasmic forms or whatever your latest term for it is. And the ones who aren't, the ones who were once alive— There's more of the people they once were in them than you think. Death doesn't change everything. Jazz would still be Jazz, not just a ghost that looks like her."

Maddie sighed. "I know it's a comforting notion, Danny, but you can't delude yourself with such falsehood."

"It's _not_ —"

"Ghosts aren't alive!" Maddie snapped. Danny blinked, not expecting her anger, and she took a few breaths before saying, "It's dangerous to hope like that, Danny. You're just setting yourself up for disappointment, and you know better."

Danny swallowed. "I know more than you do. I know more than you think."

Jazz had always wanted him to tell them.

"Danny—"

"Do you remember that accident I had in the lab when I was a kid? The one that sparked the portal? When you wanted me to go to the hospital but I insisted I was fine and Dad was so excited about the portal working that you didn't push the point?"

Maddie's lips thinned but she nodded.

"More happened then than I ever told you. I…. I don't know how it works, exactly. Jazz always understood it better than I did. But my DNA…. Something changed. I think it was infused with ectoplasm."

There was a frown on her face now, but at least she wasn't interrupting him. He was surprised she'd let him get this far.

"The thing is…." Danny could still see the steam rising from the mug. He looked down at it and channelled some of his ice powers into his hands. The mug cooled, and the liquid within froze solid as ice painted the outside. He didn't look up, even though Maddie's gasp meant she'd seen it as he'd intended. "Everything changed then, Mom. I was just fourteen. I'd been in an accident that probably should have killed me—it was worse than I ever admitted—and…. I came out of it alive and with ghost powers. Which sounds crazy, like something that should be in a cartoon or comic books or something, but it's not. It happened." He glanced up and met wide violet eyes. "I can turn into a ghost."

Silence.

"I'm Danny Phantom, Mom."

Heartbeats passed.

Maddie let out a slow breath.

Danny waited.

Finally, a quiet, heart-wrenching, "Jazz knew?"

Not what he'd expected, but Danny treated the question as the lifesaver it was. "Not at first," he admitted, "but she figured it out, and then she helped me. Sam and Tucker knew from the start. And Vlad…." He hesitated. "Vlad knows, too. Since that reunion you dragged us to. He, um, hadn't entirely given up ghost hunting like you and Dad thought." That was the safest way to put that. Let Vlad explain it for himself. "But my point is, Mom, I can go into the Ghost Zone and look for Jazz. I've been in there before. A lot. And I've got friends in there who can help me. We can find her."

Maddie took a shuddering breath. "Please don't."

"I—what?"

The tears that had been gathering in Maddie's eyes began slow tracks down her cheeks, disturbed as she'd tried to blink them away. "I…. I don't want to think that she's a ghost."

A lump that had nothing to do with grief and everything to do with an old terror filled Danny's throat. He managed to choke out, "B-but…ghosts aren't evil, mindless beings. That's my point. I'm still your son, even though I'm a ghost, too."

Maddie closed her eyes. "I know. And I…." This time, she was the one having trouble finding the right words. "I still love you, Danny, and so will your father. I don't have to understand this to know that. But that's different than what happened to Jazz."

Relief flooded him, and he found himself smiling as he argued his point. "No, it's not." He almost felt like laughing. Jazz was right; he _should_ have done this years ago. He'd have to tell her the good news. "I can go find her, and—"

"Jazz is gone, Danny," Maddie repeated. "You can't find her. There isn't anything here—or in the Ghost Zone—for you to find."

"But—"

"No. Please, just let your sister rest in peace. For all our sakes."

Maddie stood and went down to the lab, presumably to find Jack. Danny just stared after her, dumbstruck. He'd thought…. He'd thought she'd be happy, knowing her daughter might not be lost forever.

He headed into the Ghost Zone the next morning anyway, determined to find Jazz.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: **Warning** : _implied abuse_ in the second last scene. No specifics, but it's the elephant in the room.

* * *

Time meant nothing in the Ghost Zone. Danny barely slept, resting only when he needed to and searching endlessly under the eerie green light. It dimmed to almost nothing in the vast area called the Darkness, but it was a place filled with lost souls. He chased every gleam of light he saw, every faint hope, but there was no sign of Jazz, just as there had been no sign of her anywhere else. He wandered with increasing desperation, asking everyone if they'd met her, heard of her, _anything_ , and didn't realize he'd become lost himself until something collided with his head.

It fell to the smooth purple rock at his feet with a clatter that echoed against the walls of the cavern he was searching. He stared at it dumbly, absently rubbing the sore spot where it had hit. It was all bright metal, smooth and shiny and somehow wrong. It gleamed with more than just reflected light, faintly pulsing with false power—stolen power—at its centre. It didn't belong in this world. It—

There was something tied to it.

Logic reasserted itself, and Danny reached down to pick up the Booo-merang. The note was fastened on with multiple Fenton Elastics, their wide bands emblazoned with the FentonWorks symbol. Danny worked the note free, tears stinging his eyes and an ache growing in his chest as he remembered the last time he'd gotten a note this way—and the person who had sent it.

The note was written in his mother's hand, shakier than usual but still recognizable. _Danny_ , it read, _please, come home. We need you. You're our son, and_ — There was a tear in the paper, and he couldn't make out the smudge of ink in the next few lines aside from the odd word ( _family_ and _home_ and _Jazz_ ) until it concluded _—finds you. It always did before. Please come back to us, sweetie._

Going back now would be admitting that maybe Jazz _hadn't_ come back after all, that maybe she wasn't somewhere even he could find her. It meant admitting that she _was_ gone. That he really wouldn't see her again, in any form. That they wouldn't have a chance to finish their conversation.

But the note was from his mother. Not Sam, not Tucker, not even Vlad. And she'd sent it into the Ghost Zone with the Booo-merang, likely with no more certainty than Jazz had had that it would find him but trying to be confident that it would. Because it had to. Because it always did, in the end. It was keyed into Danny Phantom's ecto-signature, after all.

 _Please, come home._

Jazz would never come home again.

 _We need you._

Even though they still needed her.

 _Please, come back to us._

Jazz was gone. She wasn't coming back, even though he'd never gotten a chance to say goodbye.

Chest tight and suddenly unsteady on his feet, Danny sat down. When the tears came, he didn't try to hold them back or reason them away. Instead, he sobbed until his eyes were dry and his breathing even again.

And then he started back home, the Booo-merang clutched tightly in one hand and the sodden remnants of the note in the other.

* * *

Danielle came when he called, turning up in the living room of his apartment before he even realized she was there. She was good at that, even when she wasn't using her powers. Her earlier years had been rough, honing skills most people never needed to learn, and he still regretted not being able to do more for her. But maybe he could fix that now like he should have years ago, back when she'd actually needed him. "I told Mom and Dad," he said before she could offer any of the rote sympathies that he'd heard hundreds of times since Jazz's death. He'd never realized how many friends Jazz had had. "I want them to meet you."

Dani blinked, clearly having expected this to be about Jazz. "What?"

"You're family."

She hesitated.

She _still_ thought this was about Jazz.

"Danny," she said slowly, "I…. I heard about your search." _And that you came back empty-handed._ She didn't need to say that for him to hear it.

"That's not what this is about," he said. He didn't want her thinking that he was just using her as a replacement. Dani had felt that way far too often in her life. "I swear. This was…. This started before that accident." He didn't know how he was going to tell her, but he had to try. And maybe, with his parents' help….

Dani frowned. "What did?"

"I'll explain when we get to FentonWorks." He changed into Phantom, feeling his body shrink and lighten as it fell back into his old, fourteen-year-old form. It was still disorienting, but he'd started to think of it like a familiar glove that he'd misplaced for a while: a brief novelty of having it back again before it just seemed to _fit_ like it always had before. Jazz had suggested that a few years ago when he'd been grumbling about being short again and how he couldn't reach as far as he was used to without intentionally stretching his body. It threw off his fighting between his ghost and human forms, and he really had to concentrate so he could swing and actually connect in ghost mode.

Thankfully, ectoblasts and ice rays made up for a lot of shortfalls on that front, but he still liked to throw a good punch when he got the chance. It was embarrassing when he missed, especially when the margin wasn't small.

" _Lighter means faster, Danny. Be thankful for small mercies."_

It still hurt, knowing they'd had that conversation so many times but knowing they'd never really finished it and now never would.

His hair flopped into his eyes again, but brushing it back wouldn't help. It never had. Danny turned to look expectantly at Danielle. "Explaining will go faster if you start in ghost mode."

"By _explain_ , you mean _show_ , right?"

He didn't bother to answer, but she didn't wait for one, either. Rings of light flashed over her, changing black hair to white and blue eyes to green. Her ghostly glow was almost nonexistent in the bright light, and she could still easily pass as a human. Dani had mastered what he never had: changing her form and blending in. Or maybe changing into ghost mode without actually changing her clothes. He wasn't sure at this point if it was a matter of her perfecting her power or tied to the reason that he didn't look any different at all.

Of course, Plasmius wouldn't have been running around a science lab in a cape, so he was definitely missing something. That, or there were some really fancy lab coats out there.

Danielle looked down at him until he floated up to her eye level. She was smirking. "You're never going to grow up, cuz. Maybe our ghost forms show our mental age."

It was her attempt at a light-hearted jab, trying to get his mind off Jazz. Off Jazz being gone. Because she didn't believe him when he said this wasn't about Jazz, wasn't about introducing her as a replacement family member. But if this was about Jazz at all, it was him finally doing what she'd been telling him to for years.

"Just trust me," Danny said quietly.

Dani didn't reply, but she didn't need to. She'd been trusting him for years, even when he hadn't deserved it. And now, she trusted him again by following him into the proverbial lion's den. Dani Phantom might have grown, but she was still recognizable, and his parents had tried to hunt her down in the past.

The tentative truce between the Fentons and Phantom was well known, so Danny didn't bother going invisible before diving towards his parents' kitchen, Dani on his heels. The fact that she was hanging back meant she was nervous; she certainly didn't need his protection anymore. But maybe he could give her something else, something she didn't even know she needed.

"Mom?" he called as he hovered with Dani by the sink. "Dad?" Even to his own ears, his voice sounded young. It was too high; it hadn't broken until after the accident. He'd relished that, back when he'd been trying to keep his secret, but now it was a reminder of the past he didn't need, a reminder of the times Jazz had tried so hard to help but ended up catching him in a thermos instead.

"Be up in a minute, Danny-boy!" Jack hollered back. He'd taken the truth about Phantom in stride, not batting an eye about it. It made Danny wonder if he'd suspected something, once, before seemingly being proven wrong as Phantom and Fenton had grown more different. But even the morning Danny had gone into the Ghost Zone to look for Jazz, Jack had simply given him—given _Phantom_ —a hug, pulling in Maddie when she approached instead of stepping back, and then letting him go with nothing more than a quiet, "Good luck, Danny-boy."

Danny had never asked what he had missed, what they'd done in the weeks—months—of his absence, but none of the machines except the Booo-merang had targeted him upon his return.

Jack came up the stairs first, followed by Maddie. His eyebrows shot into the air. "The ghost girl," he said. "She one of your allies, Danno?"

It was more of a peace offering than a question; they'd seen Phantom working with Dani in the past and had seen her with increasing frequency over the years. They knew she was a friend; what they didn't know, what they needed to know, was her story.

"This is Danielle," he said, gesturing with one hand.

"Dani," she corrected.

"She's like me." He dropped to the floor and changed back, stretching to his full height as Dani transformed back into her human self. Judging by the look on his mother's face, she could see the resemblance more clearly in human form. Dani was tall for a girl, barely an inch shorter than he was, and she didn't try to hide it. Moreover, the expression she wore now was one he'd seen on his own face too many times not to recognize it. She was trying to hide her nervousness behind a mask of bravery, telling herself that she could get through whatever this was, no matter what it took.

That determination was a Fenton trait, even if she'd never taken the Fenton name.

It had been years before he'd told Sam and Tucker the full truth about Dani. They'd known she was a halfa, but he'd actually told Jazz the truth before he'd told them. He'd seen her face change after Tucker had offhandedly mentioned Danielle being a cousin, so he'd felt obliged to fill her in then. Dani had agreed to tell Sam and Tucker after that, just so the mistake wouldn't be made again, but she'd also made it clear that she liked thinking of Danny as her cousin and saw no reason to change that.

But his parents….

He couldn't pretend she was just a cousin with his parents any more than he'd been able to with Jazz. If they only knew her as Dani Phantom, sure, maybe he'd be able to fool them into thinking she was some long-dead cousin, but the time for those lies was over. Dani _wasn't_ his cousin, not really, and she needed more help than he could give her alone.

Danny glanced at Danielle. Her lips thinned, but she nodded, giving him permission to proceed.

"We call each other cousins," he said softly, "but the truth's a lot more murky than that."

"I thought you were the only half-ghost," Maddie breathed, still staring at Dani.

Danielle shot him a sharp look and then let out the breath she'd been holding. "He's not," she said, "but my origins are complicated. I'm…. Danny got his powers in a lab accident. I'm an experiment."

She couldn't hide the bitterness in her voice.

As far as he was concerned, she shouldn't need to.

"It was a long time ago," Dani added, perhaps not wanting to see the mixture of pity and horror on his parents' faces.

"But something went wrong back then," Danny said. He could feel Dani's eyes burning into him, but she didn't interrupt. "Her DNA isn't stable like mine." He heard Dani mutter something about Ecto-Dejecto under her breath, but he continued, "She's aging faster than she should. Something with her cells. I need your help to stop that."

Dani found his hand and gripped it, _hard_ , nails digging into his skin. He could feel her trembling. Vlad really hadn't told her. Now he wished he'd talked to her first instead of springing this on her now, but he hadn't really imagined that she hadn't known. She'd always understood the science part of things better than him; he preferred mechanics. And Vlad…. How could he have kept this from her, even in the years since he'd told Danny about it? That hadn't been the last time they'd talked about it.

"It's because I'm a clone," she whispered, but her words sounded loud in the fallen silence. His parents hadn't moved, their shock only seen in the slight widening of his father's eyes and his mother's swallow.

Dani's hand fell away from his, and he turned to see her shrinking into herself, dropping to the floor in a huddle. He opened his mouth, but he didn't know what to say. What could he say? That this was his fault? That he should have told her earlier? That _Vlad_ should have told her earlier? That he didn't want her to find out this way but that they needed help because he couldn't figure this out on his own and it was too important to keep her in the dark?

Maddie crossed the floor and knelt next to Dani. "You're safe here, sweetie," she said. She rested a hand on Dani's arm, but when Dani flinched away, she withdrew it. "We won't hurt you. Even if you weren't a…a clone, you're a friend of Danny's. I daresay you're family. We'll do what we can to help if you're willing to work with us. We can take as much time as you need."

Danny didn't realize his father had also moved until he felt the arm wrap around his shoulder. "You found us another cousin, Danny. I just wish we hadn't found out about her like this."

"Can you help her?" He wasn't in ghost mode anymore, but his voice sounded young. Lost. Helpless.

Jack gave him a squeeze. "We'll do our best."

* * *

The tests were frequent at first but not particularly time-consuming, except when Maddie specifically asked Dani to stay so she could be monitored. Dani agreed—she always agreed—and slowly started to open up, to believe that she had been accepted as a part of the family. Danny went through almost as many tests as she did, of course. He was the closest thing his parents would get to a baseline, an idea of how Dani's DNA, her cells, or whatever else they were looking at, should appear.

Since she was his clone, he might be able to offer a solution that Vlad never could.

But blood and ectoplasm infusions did nothing. Stem cells might work, his mother said, but she wasn't willing to risk something like that in a home lab. It was too dangerous, even for them, and they couldn't risk going to a hospital. DNA was extracted, dyed, and compared under the microscope, as were their cells, but the ectoplasmic elements didn't hold the stain. Dani was the one to realize that they'd react to the presence of their ectoplasm, glowing in response, but whatever his mother had been looking for, she couldn't find it.

"Nothing different is going to come up in the centrifuge," Dani muttered to him as their blood samples spun down. "This is pointless. They can't help me, cuz. This isn't a disease; there isn't going to be some magical antibody that'll stop this. What's wrong with me is more than another shot of Ecto-Dejecto is going to fix."

"If anyone can figure this out, they can."

"But they _can't_. That's my point. I'm a _mistake_. I've _always_ been a mistake. They can't fix that."

Light flashed, and green eyes stared into his blue ones. "I can't wait around like this. I can't…. I can't stand this false hope. If I have less time than I thought I did, I need to _live_. I want to see more before I melt like the Wicked Witch of the West."

"You're not going to melt, Dani!"

"What else do you think _destabilize_ means?" There were tears in her eyes. "I hate waiting like this, Danny. I can't do it. I'm sorry. I just can't."

He reached out to her, but she turned intangible, pulling away and flying off.

She was too used to running to try to find comfort in family now.

And that was _his_ fault.

Danny closed his eyes on his own tears. "Jazz," he murmured, "I keep messing up, even when I try to help. I'm making the same mistakes I did as a kid, like I haven't learned anything. I wish you were here to tell me what to do. I never liked your advice, but it was usually pretty good." It was usually right, too. And she'd know what to do in a situation like this.

If he'd stayed with Sam…. She'd be better in this situation, too. Smack some sense into him if nothing else. But he hadn't wanted to hold her back, so he'd let her go. He hadn't wanted to drag her down; she was meant for so much more than Amity Park, and he hadn't been ready to leave it. That conversation—argument, really, full of tears and bitterness and longing—had left him feeling like a foolish fourteen year old again. That had been the first time in a long time that going ghost had felt like an escape.

For Dani, it still _was_ an escape.

The only one she thought she had.

"I'm sorry." She couldn't hear him, but he had to say it. It was all he could do now. Maybe Vlad was right, thinking Dani had been happier in her ignorance. He certainly hadn't improved things. _Accept what you cannot change_ , Vlad had said, and what had he done instead? Failed in his attempt to change things, to fix them, just like Vlad had said he would. "I'm sorry."

* * *

Hours of flying did nothing to clear his head. Light leached from the sky, allowing the first stars to shine through, but they brought him no comfort tonight. He'd lost Jazz. He couldn't save Dani. Even Amity Park didn't need him anymore.

Danny finally settled in one of his favourite trees in the park near the school and stared up through the leaves. Venus was already bright in the sky, but she'd be joined soon enough by the surrounding constellations. He still knew them by heart, still liked to watch them, even though he knew he'd never fly among them as an astronaut.

That childhood dream had died in the portal accident, even if he hadn't realized it at the time.

Even once he realized he was no longer alone, it took him a few precious seconds to place the sound drifting up to him as muffled sobbing. Danny flipped off the branch, looking below to see a shock of blonde hair cascading down a bent body at the base of the tree.

He didn't need to look to the shifting stars to know it was late.

He let himself drift closer to the ground and settled into a crouch in the grass. The girl was older than he'd expected—a teenager, not a young child—but still young. Too young to be crying alone. "Hey," he called softly, not wanting to startle her even if that _was_ his prerogative as a ghost. "Do you need help?"

The girl looked up sharply, staring at him with wide red eyes. Tears clung to her lashes and tracked down her chin, and she wiped at her runny nose with the sleeve of her—were those _pyjamas_? "No," she said, choking out the word as she scrambled to her feet. She wore shoes but no socks, and those were definitely pyjamas. "I'm fine," she continued, despite all evidence to the contrary. "Thanks anyway."

He'd know that was a lie even if he hadn't used it all throughout his teenaged years—and beyond. He'd been an oblivious kid, but even he could've seen through this one back then. "I've been around long enough to know a lie when I hear it." He stood, but when she jerked away from his outstretched arm, he dropped it back to his side. "You want to at least talk about it?" That's what Jazz would suggest, and she usually had better judgement than he did in situations like this.

The girl had already regained her composure, donning a mask to hide her emotions. He knew the feeling. "No thanks." She took a few steps away but didn't turn her back on him.

 _She doesn't trust me._ It shouldn't be such a surprising revelation. He didn't recognize her—he didn't recognize most of the kids these days—and without so many public ghost fights, he wasn't as common a sight as he had once been.

But still.

 _Amity Park_ and _Danny Phantom_ were practically synonymous, even now.

Then again, maybe she did know who he was. Maybe she just believed the rhetoric his parents had once spouted about all ghosts being evil. They'd recanted most of it, citing their newest studies ('most ghosts are evil, others misunderstood'), but there were still people out there who believed what they once had. There always would be. Danny was just happy the Guys in White had given up trying to capture him.

"Can I call someone for you, then?" Danny asked, pulling out his cell phone. He usually tried not to use one overtly as Phantom—that would raise more questions than he wanted to answer—but in this case….

The girl shook her head vigorously and took another few steps back. "Just leave me alone." Then, quieter, "I'm not worth your attention."

She turned and ran.

He didn't know if he'd make things worse if he followed.

He didn't know if he'd make things better if he pressed her.

Even when he meant well, things turned out horribly.

He drifted upward to watch her path, wanting to at least reassure himself that she'd be okay if he didn't do anything. Instead of heading for the street, she doubled back once out of what would've been his line of sight and headed past the fountain for the far side. When she hit a small copse of trees, she didn't emerge.

"Can't go home," Danny muttered. That was a better assumption than that she didn't have one, given how she'd been dressed. He flew down to find her again, this time announcing himself as he searched. "My name's Danny," he called, hoping he'd just spooked her the first time. "Look, I'm just trying to help."

Silence fell, but he'd heard her before and knew which direction to go in. Still, pretending he was searching would give her time to prepare herself for when he came into view. "There must be someone you can talk to even if it's not me. Family or friends or someone on the other end of a phone. I can lend you my phone if you just need to make a call." It would even be close to untraceable, given what Tucker had done to it, but he wasn't about to tell her that.

He ignored the rustling behind him, the snap of twigs and scuffling of shoes against rotting plant litter.

"You're that ghost."

He turned, meeting curious blue eyes as the girl stepped from behind a tree. "'That ghost'?" he repeated.

"The one my aunt talks about." The girl shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. "I just thought they were bedtime stories, but you're not…human."

He was a bedtime story now? That was new. At least it explained why she'd been so afraid of him; she wasn't from here. If she were, she'd _know_ he was real. It was kinda hard to live in Amity Park and not know that.

"I'm a ghost," Danny said by way of agreement. "Danny Phantom. And I don't know what you've heard about me, but since you're not running and screaming I'm going to assume it's good?"

That got him a small smile. "You're a hero," she whispered. "You save people."

Danny crossed his arms, looking her up and down again as he hovered in front of her. "You need saving." It wasn't a question.

Another shiver ran through the girl. "It's my mom's boyfriend. He found us here. Aunt Star has friends, but…."

 _Star's niece_. He had a vague recollection of the story, something he'd overheard at some point. Judging by the girl in front of him, it hadn't been exaggerated.

He normally dealt with ghosts, but he could see to human creeps, too.

He passed the girl his phone. "Call the police. Tell them what you know. And tell them Phantom's going to make sure they get their guy gift-wrapped before he hurts anyone else."

* * *

Danny found a new rhythm. Instead of fighting ghosts, he'd help fight the very human crimes that still plagued Amity Park. The police were happy to work with him, and the fire department was naturally grateful whenever he managed to clear a building or even extinguish a fire before things got out of hand. It wasn't that he'd never done the like before, but this was the first time he'd started actively searching for these incidents instead of just attending to them whenever they caught his eye.

It gave him a new purpose, reassured him that he was doing some good. The younger generation learned his name again, gaining him more than a few fans, and he found himself recounting stories of the past. Of his past. Sometimes, it seemed like so little had changed; other times, it seemed that eons had passed since he was their age.

Fortunately, whenever he made some comment that made it sound like he wasn't the teenager he appeared to be, they attributed it to the fact that he'd died 'ages ago'. As if he weren't their parents' age. But that was okay, too. Because it made him remember how young these kids were and how much of their lives were still ahead of them.

The work he did wasn't the same as Jazz had done, but he was still doing his best to help people find their place in this world, to find the strength to hang on in the tough times and persevere, weathering whatever life threw at them. Sometimes it was as straightforward as saving them from some physical danger; sometimes, he learned later, it was as simple as promising to talk to them the next day.

They accepted him as one of them despite his quirks, much like Poindexter had been accepted when he'd taken over Danny's body that one time, and there was comfort in that. Some of them told him things they wouldn't trust an adult with simply because they thought he'd listen to them, hear them out and believe them without judging them. It made him thankful, for what seemed to be the first time, that his ghost form never changed.

He could do more this way than he could have if Phantom had grown along with Fenton.

Dani had been right; this town didn't need his protection anymore, not from ghosts. But its children still needed him, in their own way. His youth might be a mask, but the knowledge he'd gained over the years wasn't. And if he could help even one person, well, didn't that make it all worthwhile?

Jazz was gone. He couldn't save Dani. And Phantom would never grow older while he still drew breath. _Accept what you cannot change_. Maybe he could finally do that. Especially if he could change things so that they were a whole lot better for everyone else who needed him, people he actually could help. Jazz would have liked that. Dani, if she ever answered his calls again or decided to come back, would approve, too—if only because he was able to be for some of these kids what he had never been able to be for her when she'd needed him most.

He was doing this for Jazz, for Dani, for all the kids who needed him, but he was also doing it for himself. Sometimes it was hard to keep his lives separate, not to slip and greet someone only Phantom knew, but it gave him a unique perspective, too. Because he could see the effect of the ripples he'd created as they spread throughout the community.

He couldn't stop everything terrible from happening, of course, but he could stop some of it, and anything was better than nothing at all. And even when he was too late to stop something, when the fire was too far gone for a building to be saved, well, he could help stop it from spreading. And that made a difference, too. Every action like that did, even when it just came down to being a decent role model.

 _Accept what you cannot change_ , Vlad had said. But it was more than that. It was learning to recognize what could be changed and what couldn't, even with ample resources and more than enough stubbornness, and understanding how to make the best of things. It was embracing the unchangeable things, turning them into something to be celebrated instead of something that weighed you down. Things would never be perfect, but they could be made better, and sometimes that was enough.

For Danny, for now, it was.


End file.
